Tony Hawk's Underground

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Neversoft takes its game to the people.

By Douglass C. Perry

No, it's not a skateboarding revolution, dufus. But Neversoft, the development team responsible for the skateboard-videogame upheaval of the late 1990s, has indeed handed over the controls to the kids. Tony Hawk's Underground (THUG), the fifth title in as many years as its existence, gives players more customization, more control and more to do in this year's model that it's become a tough task to get it all down on paper.

So let's be quick about it. Tony Hawk's Underground is both a departure and a return for the series. New to the fold is the Story mode, a handful of Create-A-You-Name-It modes, and the ability to get off the board. The same rock solid gameplay, replete with superb control and surprisingly deep levels, is back. For PS2 owners, AKA a bunch of lucky bastards, there's a skateshop full of new online games to play, such as the ability to scan your own face, and to bring everything you have created (your deck, skater, tricks, and park) online, and then to play online. That's really just scratching the surface.

There is no doubt about it, though. After four years of making the same game and perhaps yearning to do something genuinely different, Neversoft is stretching its brilliant but aging franchise beyond the boundaries it defined in October 1999. A story mode? Are they nuts? Face scanning? What happened to all the pros? What can they possible do different?

All respectable concerns, and all soundly taken care of. Tony Hawk's Underground is no revolution. It is a logical extension of every possible facet in the game that succeeds in delivering a rich skateboarding experience. The new off-the-board moves are strangely addictive, the story mode is light but earnest and funny. And the Create modes are rich with possibilities. But the game also disappoints. With the exception of the short-lived but inspired Aggressive Inline, there is nothing that compares to the series. And with such high standards -- set out by the very first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater -- Neversoft has made its own job harder than you could imagine.

Shining Skating Star So it's expanded in every way possible, presenting the same recognizable skateboarding experience with a new narrative and by giving players an overabundance of things to tinker with, tweak and modify. PlayStation 2 owners, without a doubt, score the biggest in this year's iteration. Claiming that Microsoft's Xbox Live system prevents the free flow of changing content and by simply ignoring Nintendo's minute online efforts altogether, Activision's PS2 version gets skaters online to play, but also sets out to get them involved in a braoder fashion.

Head-to-Head Comparison! Don't know which version of T.H.U.G. to buy? We tell you in this point-by-point breakdown, which details the differences between GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox with side-by-side screenshots. Buy or rent smart.

Using its own proprietary scanning technology for the PS2, THUG enables players to flesh out the story mode to its fullest. It's a simple matter of sending in a digital photograph to faces@thugonline.com. Within less than 15 minutes, players have a low-res texture that's downlodable to their memory cards. The oval image is fit onto a character model, after which players can then go to town customizing their new babies.

This gimmicky feature, which has been available on PCs for years, works. Very well. It doesn't work so much because it's that accurate; my face never looked exactly like my own. But it functions well enough because of the customization I did afterward; because there is something magically connective and gratifying about seeing oneself in a game. In conjunction with the Story mode, it all fits together. You work your way up from local punk to a skateboarding pro. You really do feel like a skateboard star.

The Create-A-Skater mode is robust enough on its own, however, to give Xbox and Cube owners a run for their money. The models are scalable in size, and the laundry list of options is immense. There are dozens of skin textures, eyes, faces, hats, hair styles, shirts, pants, pads, shoes, and sheesh, the list goes on and on. It's deeper than that, though, you can tweak the hue, contrast, saturation and other elements to create a skater that is entirely unique. Like tattoos? Pony tails? Green Mohawks? They're all in here. You can be as ugly, messed up and disturbing looking as you want -- or as cool and tattooed as you want.